A lighthearted romance, pleasant despite its lack of plausibility.
In Adams’ romance novel, a young woman is befriended by a country music star and finds herself falling in love with his tour manager.
The story opens as Christine Matthews, a professional song-plugger, races to the Country Music Awards in Nashville. Unfortunately, she’s running late, and the doors are about to close; she takes a messy tumble to the sidewalk and loses her opportunity to enter the venue. As luck would have it, the country music scene’s current heartthrob, Austin Garrett, is just pulling up in his tour bus when Christine falls (“She was humiliated enough without having to face the newest hunk in country music”). He recognizes her as the person who pitched him his recent hit song, and he invites her to attend the show as his date. From there, the pair begins to develop a complicated friendship, with Austin acting sometimes like a helpless younger brother and at other times like a romantic hopeful. Christine, however, is much more interested in Austin’s tour manager, Matt Miller, than she is in country’s newest pinup. Matt assumes Christine only has eyes for Austin, and she, in turn, believes he’s committed to another woman. When the media presents Christine as Austin’s newest girlfriend, she receives a flood of cruel comments online, bringing up past traumas and complicating her relationships with Austin and Matt even further. Told from Christine’s perspective, this plot-driven story is relatively fast-paced and engaging. However, many of the plot points strain credulity—the speed with which Austin adopts Christine as his closest friend and confidante feels like a stretch. Similarly, there are so few meaningful interactions between Christine and Matt in the first half of the book that it’s difficult to understand why she is so smitten with him. Readers learn precious little about Matt as a character, or what about him appeals to Christine. Even so, as the misunderstandings pile up, the author does an admirable job of rendering characters with complex issues of self-doubt while also pulling back the curtain on the Nashville music scene.
A lighthearted romance, pleasant despite its lack of plausibility.Pub Date: June 17, 2025
ISBN: 9781647429188
Page Count: 304
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A book about revenge that’s more punishing than purposeful.
A woman from a matriarchal society kidnaps a prince from a neighboring kingdom, planning to force him into marriage.
Five hundred years ago, the wife of the abusive king of Amarra prayed to her goddess for mercy; in return, the goddess granted every woman in the country the ability to rule over men. Amarra’s queens have governed with vengeance ever since, creating a fiercely violent matriarchy. Now, 21-year-old Olerra Corasene, a gifted military strategist and powerful general, is competing with her cunning and devious cousin, Glenaerys, to be the next queen. Since Glen is trying to secure the throne by currying favor with the wealthy nobles, Olerra decides on a different tactic, the time-honored Amarran tradition of kidnapping a husband. Her target is a good-looking younger prince from the neighboring country of Brutus, but she accidentally and unknowingly nabs Sanos, the king’s eldest son and heir to the throne. She drags Sanos back to Amarra, where he’s treated with all the contempt for men that is normal in her society: He’s dressed as a sexual plaything, forced to shave his beard and body hair, leashed and restrained for bad behavior. Olerra can’t understand Sanos’ objections to this treatment, and the ensuing power struggle makes up most of the plot. Marketed as romantasy, Levenseller’s first adult novel falls flat as both romance and fantasy. There is little connection or chemistry between Olerra and Sanos, and since both are more caricature than character, neither experiences the kind of growth that creates challenging or interesting romantic relationships. In addition, the worldbuilding is paper thin. Amarra is a world built on reverse misogyny, but the motifs, imagery, and scenes often read more like a brainstormed list (a penis guillotine!) than a fully realized attempt to say something meaningful about women’s rage.
A book about revenge that’s more punishing than purposeful.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781250379375
Page Count: 368
Publisher: FEIWEL
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Bailey hits it out of the park with her latest spicy romance.
Two ambitious athletes plus one fake-dating arrangement—what could go wrong?
Though it’s only his first season for the Boston Bearcats hockey team, Robbie Corrigan has a well-established reputation as a playboy. He’s got major skills on the ice, and he’s also much more likely to love ’em and leave ’em than he is to build any long, meaningful relationships. Naturally, he’s just met the one woman who seems completely resistant to his charm: Skylar Page, a Boston University softball pitcher. When they meet over a friendly Saturday morning baseball game, Robbie instantly makes a poor impression by bragging to his teammates about his latest conquest within Skylar’s hearing. He thinks she’s gorgeous, though, and when he sets his sights on her, he’s surprised that she doesn’t seem to know it. Despite her initial distaste for Robbie, Skylar grudgingly confesses that she could use his help. If they pretend to date, maybe her current crush—her brother’s best friend—will finally sit up and take notice of her in a romantic way. The timing is less than ideal, since Robbie will have to team up with Skylar in the Page family’s latest wilderness competition, but it turns out that Robbie’s willingness to play fake boyfriend stems from some very real feelings. He wants to prove to her that he’s a changed man, and redeeming himself in her eyes starts with making sure she knows that she can really trust him. The latest addition to Bailey’s Big Shots series is a sexy, feel-good romance brimming over with the author’s trademark humor and dirty talk. While Skylar and Robbie’s dynamic doesn’t quite reach the level of enemies-to-lovers—he’s so head-over-heels for her that there’s no room for any real mean-spiritedness—their playful snark doubles as a welcome dash of foreplay in the lead-up to some seriously steamy scenes. Robbie’s efforts to show Skylar that he’s turned over a new leaf also result in some of the book’s best moments, emphasizing his commitment to becoming the type of man he knows she deserves.
Bailey hits it out of the park with her latest spicy romance.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780063380837
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
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